Sporting KC has reached multi-year TV agreement with Fox Sports KC

The Star is reporting that Sporting KC has reached a multi-year TV agreement with Fox Sports KC, along with some changes to the broadcast team.

After three seasons on KCMI-TV, the club is joining the Royals on Fox Sports Midwest. In 2017, each SKC match that is NOT nationally televised will be shown on FSKC. Moreover, some of the matches will be shown outside of the local market on Fox Sports Midwest. FSKC covers western MO, KS, and Nebraska. FS Midwest will expand that to ALL of Missouri and Iowa.

This also means of course that each local broadcast will be available on Fox Sports Go, which is good news to many. I know a lot of millennials out there are like me - living without cable and simply streaming every channel online by logging in to their parents cable subscription.

Along with the move to cable, a new color analyst and a new sideline reporter will join the broadcast team next season. SKC President Jake Reid says the search is ongoing to fill the roles that Andy Gruenebaum & Jake Yadrich played this past year.

We should be able to notice a difference in the quality of the broadcasts. The team will now have access to Fox Sports’ on air production elements as they produce the pre-game and post-game shows.

While the advantages for the club of expanding their reach and power to Fox Sports are obvious, you can be sure there are some upset fans across the KC Metro. Those without cable were always able to watch the local broadcasts for free with an antenna. This is something I always appreciated, because the Royals were unable to provide it on “Free TV”.

Another potential downside to this, will be conflicts with Royals. They will get bumped to FSKC PLUS, which is a secondary channel. I am not entirely sure this channel is available to EVERYONE who gets FSKC. You can find the full channel lineup for this channel RIGHT HERE. But when this conflict occurs, the game will still be available to stream on Fox Sports Go.

Fox also offers Fox Soccer 2 Go. It is $20/month for all soccer games shown on the family network of Fox Sports. We’ve got Thad getting some more info on it, but I’m not sure if this would black out Sporting KC matches in the local broadcast area. I have used it before and it did NOT black out Sporting’s CCL matches. So this could be a viable option.

I think this move is going to turn out very well. The expanded reach of all the broadcasts to cover more Sporting Academy areas will do wonders. Plus, the quality of the telecasts were in need of an upgrade so I welcome the change.

Are you happy about the changes? Who should replace Andy and Jake?